South Africa reopens the survey on D3ATHS of activists of the apartheid era

A South African court opened an investigation on Monday to the murders 40 years ago of four anti-apartheid activists from a police team in one of the most famous atrocities of the Apertheid era.

Nobody was put to justice for the 1985 killings of the so-called Cradock Four, and their families accused the post-apartheid government of intervening to block the case to go to the trial.

The teachers Fort Cata, Matthew Gonewe and Sicelo Mhlauli and the Sparrow Mkonto railway worker were kidnapped and killed while returning home by a political meeting in the southern city of Cradock.

“After 40 years, families are still waiting for justice and closure,” the lawyer Howard Varney, representing the relatives of the four men, told the court in a declaration of opening.

“We intend to demonstrate that the death of the four cradocks was caused by a calculated and premeditated decision of the Apartheid regime taken at the highest level of the government state security system,” said Varney to the court in the eastern city of GQeberha.

The Commission for the truth and reconciliation, established to discover political crimes conducted under the apartheid, refused the amnesty to six men for the four killings of Cradock.

This left them open to the accusation, but the post-apartheid authorities did not undertake any action, said Varney.

This may have been partly due to a “toxic mix of laziness, indifference, inability or incompetence”, but families also believed that “political forces intervened to block their cases from proceeding,” he said.

“This investigation is probably the last possibility that families reach a semblance of closing. They deserve nothing less than a complete and complete accounting with the past,” said the lawyer.

It is the third investigation on the four murders of Cradock, which has reached the height of the repression of the white-minor government of anti-apartheid activists.

The claims of delays deliberated in pursuing the crimes of the age -old era have led President Cyril Ramaphosa to establish a judicial investigation in April.

In January, 25 families of victims and survivors of the crimes of the Abyid era, including the Cradock Four, announced that they were causing the government for a “gross bankruptcy” to investigate and pursue the authors.

AFP